Bonds
by The Dragon Mage
Summary: Sasuke is tied to his brother by stronger bonds than anyone knows; bonds twisted together in darkness, cemented by blood and unbroken by death. An examination of the obsession one Uchiha has for another. Dark psychoanalysis fic, various Uchihacest-ness.
1. Terror

**AN:** I do not know what is possessing me to write this thing, but my desire to make a statement about dear Sasuke's extremely twisted personal motivation has overcome all else. I have lots of… _theories _about characters, some more bizarre than others. This is an expression of one such theory. It shall be three chapters, and is finished already; I am just editing the next two sections. Author motto = Prompt updates are prompted by prompt reviews.

**Warnings:** discussions of sexual matters, disturbing implications, onesided incestuous obsession (Sasuke. Just… Sasuke). Shall shortly contain Orochimaru/Sasuke, implied Orochimaru/various Sound ninja, and implied Madara/Izuna.

_Chapter 1: Terror__

Sasuke is terrified of sleep.

He will never admit it, not even to himself, but the darkness lurks in the back of his mind, coiling like a snake or- or a long tail of black hair, twisting in the wind.

In Konoha, he tosses and turns in his bed for long hours each night, trying to stave off the exhaustion which seeps into his limbs like poison, like death. He hauls himself out of tangled sheets each morning, dreading the cheery, hopeful faces of his teammates, the quiet assessment of Kakashi's single eye.

The two children- he is not a child, and has not been for a long time- do not understand why their talented, desired comrade is so silent, so sullen. They do not realize what madness waits for him in the dark.

Sakura thinks she knows him, but all she knows is his pretty moon-shaped face, his graceful movements, his alleged maturity and talent. If the naïve young girl who believes she is a kunoichi could see into Sasuke's mind, she would not stop running for a long, long time.

She worships him, and mistakes his daytime pathos for sophistication.

Naruto sees more, but not everything, not nearly everything. The wild, golden boy who could and does love anyone, everyone, however broken or bereaved, does not comprehend what it is to feel nothing for the human race, nothing for anybody save one man. Naruto is sane, healthy, _good_; he knows nothing of obsession. He knows nothing of the dark.

The other boy tries to beat Sasuke out of his self-imposed apathy. He is sometimes successful, but the bright sun which is Naruto cannot burn away a black sky, a full moon, a trail of crimson blood. Naruto cannot get rid of sleep, and all its weighted horror.

Sasuke does not know how much Kakashi sees, but his teacher is wise, and does not interfere too much. The copy-nin understands what it is to crave revenge, to crave power, to feel nothing but hatred and arrogance. He thinks that retribution is what Sasuke wants. He is right; up to a point.

Kakashi watches, as he always does, and Sasuke is left alone, isolated amidst crowds, made into stone by exhaustion and terror and pride.

On missions, Sasuke lies quietly, listening to Naruto mutter in his sleep, observing Sakura's soft breathing. He cannot struggle and fight for wakefulness; not here, in the company of others; so he lies like a dead thing under the moon and pinches his leg with repetitive fingers, making spasms of pain.

During the day, he fulfils his duties with the mechanical precision of war-deadened shinobi twice his age. He fights and fights and fights until the opponent is dead or the task complete, and he grimaces with pain as often as he smiles, which is rarely.

Sakura, whose fierce intelligence has a blind spot when it comes to Sasuke, is awed by his skill.

Naruto, who will never admit how much he loves-hates-envies the other boy, strives to match him, not realizing the price one pays for battle-calm, for easy murder.

Kakashi, who has lived through war and loss himself, wonders what exactly goes on in this Uchiha's head, and whether Konoha should begin to be afraid.

And every night, Sasuke's body is frozen and rigid while his mind turns circles like crimson kaleidoscopes and his fingers twist his flesh, chasing pain away with pain.

Sasuke is terrified of sleep.

He comes from a clan bred for pride and power, trained for rage and absolute control. Though all but two known Uchiha are now dead, Sasuke is still a wielder of the sharingan, and he lives up to such people's reputations.

During the day, he holds onto his mind with a grip of steel, and the beautiful mask he calls his face barely slips.

During the day, he is cold and caustic and uncaring, displaying only hints of emotion below the surface.

During the day, arrogance and anger are enough to keep him going.

But at night, alone in the dark, Sasuke struggles for the long-prized aloofness of his lineage. He is afraid, deathly afraid, of letting his eyes close, letting his control go, because in the muddled relaxation of slumber all the ghosts he fights against come out to haunt him.

He fears sleep because of the dreams which populate it.

Sasuke is a twelve year old boy, almost thirteen, whose own brother murdered their entire family and then abandoned him.

The young Uchiha's subconscious is a mess of blood and corpses; his most horrific memories are a record of massacre, of holocaust, of gory images and terrible betrayal.

He is an orphan with a prideful façade and a crippling inferiority complex, whose stated motive in life involves committing murder.

One would expect him to have nightmares.

He does not.

Sasuke is terrified of sleep.

He is afraid, but not because of nightmares.

The dreams which claim Sasuke in the dead hours of the morning are far worse than any bloodbath replayed in crystal-sharp definition by acidic memory, far worse than the slumped forms of his parent's corpses recollected.

The dreams begin with a full moon, fat and golden above the dark houses of the Uchiha district. They begin with his brother's face, with beautiful Itachi the prince of death, the beloved idol.

In the dreams, Itachi saunters towards him down the blood-soaked street, picking his nimble way past mutilated corpses. Under the bloated moon they stand facing each other, two Uchihas with black, black eyes and sable hair, two brothers surrounded by a massacre.

Every night in Sasuke's head, the scene plays out, a macabre film with the colors and clarity of a photo negative, a dance of delicate brutality. He meets his brother, under the moon, surrounded by dead family members. They stand in the street for a long time, and then Itachi raises his arm, slowly, slowly, and holds a kunai to Sasuke's throat. It stays there for an aching, endless moment. Itachi does not smile.

But there is no slide of steel, no death sentence, no expected, _normal _sort of nightmare. Instead, every night, Itachi's hand drops, the blade traces its way downward, along Sasuke's neck, past the bared curve of his collar bones, and Itachi leans down and kisses his little brother with lips as sweet and silent as poison, with love as strong as death.

It ends with the light of dawn spilling in through Sasuke's window, with the morning coming to save him- or to damn him.

It ends, as has been remarked, with tangled sheets; sheets which Sasuke must wash in secret for fear of someone asking questions, seeing the stains. Sometimes they are blood, running from wounds his fingernails have dug into his skin as he tries to excape the dream. Sometimes they are something else entirely.

It ends… it ends with a twelve year old boy (almost thirteen) curled up in a ball on his sin-tainted, tousled bed, sobbing with confusion and guilt and terrible, terrible longing.

After a while, Sasuke gets up, showers, puts on his clothes, and walks out into the world with a visage of stone, a mask of ivory skin and ebony hair, a desperate façade.

Sasuke faces his teammates with seeming indifference and occasional, slightly condescending fondness; because he knows things they do not.

He knows that if pretty, clever, foolish Sakura was told that his older brother fucks him every night in his dreams she would not blush and try to flirt. She would fear him, and pity him. Her revulsion, masked with sympathy, would make things incalculably worse.

He knows that Naruto, to whom love comes as easy as smiling, can never understand what it is to hate one's own mind, one's own heart, one's own self. Naruto never had a family, never had a brother, and so he does not comprehend that hate is just love with its back turned, and that obsession is just a step away from lust.

He knows that Kakashi, who sees much, believes that Sasuke is cold and unreachable because his brother robbed him of the ability to love. He believes that Sasuke hates Itachi, and therefore wants to kill him. The copy nin, despite the transplanted sharingan he conceals, does not see far enough.

It comes down, in the end, to what love and hatred mean. It comes down to the twisted psychology of a cursed clan, and the bittersweet emotional cocktail stirred into fruition by betrayal.

Sasuke is terrified of sleep because it shows him what he wants.

Oh, not sex, not really; he is only thirteen, and although shinobi, especially Uchiha, grow up quickly, he is not yet fixated on desire. That time is yet to come.

Sasuke, poor, broken, angry Sasuke wants his brother. He wants _Itachi_, wants all the things that made him love the other boy as a child; Itachi's smile, his tenderness, his beauty and his talent. Sasuke wants Itachi, and want has twisted over the years.

Kakashi, brilliant, broken, so-much-like-his-student Kakashi, is wrong. Sasuke does not really want to kill his brother. He wants Itachi to look at him, to _see _him, to value him for one last time, and if he has to hunt down and kill the other Uchiha to achieve recognition then he will.

Sasuke's revenge quest is not for himself, or for his clan, or for any sense of justice. It is for Itachi. For the sake of his brother's attention, Sasuke will kill him. For the sake of his obsession, Sasuke fears to sleep.

Sasuke _wants_ Itachi, and he comes from a clan which loves power with an almost physical fixation. For the Uchiha, always, their siblings have _meant _power; a brother for is a rival, a twin, a source of eternal life and an enemy who seeks immortality for himself. A brother is a fellow pilgrim on the quest for mangekyou; a fellow pilgrim who one will have to duel to the death someday.

If one fixates on power to the exclusion of all else, and one's family will either be one's victims or one's murderers in the pursuit of it, is it at all surprising that the youngest Uchiha both loves and hates his brother? Is it surprising that he has fixated on him to the exclusion of all else? Is it even surprising, in the end, that Sasuke dreams of sex with his sibling in a street full of corpses every night? The history of the Uchiha is one of sin and loyalty and lust. It is violent and overwhelming and terribly wrong; like two pairs of sharingan eyes, facing each other on a bloody street, silent under the sky. Silent under the moon.

If Sasuke had hated Itachi from the beginning, perhaps the killing of his clan would have hurt less. If the massacre had only been murder and not betrayal as well, perhaps simple revenge would have been enough.

But Sasuke loved his brother, loved him more than anyone else in the world, and so what Itachi did to him was far worse than merely making him an orphan.

Sasuke hates Itachi for killing his clan, but Itachi did more than that. He broke his little brother's heart, he turned himself from an idol into a demon, and Sasuke's mind is now as tangled as his sheets; sticky and full of darkness and regret. He cannot stop loving his brother, he cannot stop hating him, and Itachi is still, even now, more important to him than anyone else in the world.

Sasuke is terrified of sleep, because he dreams of things he does not understand, and wakes up wanting what he cannot have, what will never, never be his again.

He does not comprehend the masochism of his growing sexuality, does not want to think about why these dreams arouse him as well as torment him, and he is repulsed by the fact that he fears to sleep and that there is a part of him which wants to.

Sasuke wakes up wishing for his brother's love, his brother's affection, his brother's touch. These things are lost to him forever, and no cherry-blossom girl or golden rival can replace them.

Naruto and Sakura are ignorant and peaceful; they have not yet been made to face the darkness in every shinobi's heart, and their black-haired, taciturn teammate is a closed book to them.

Kakashi too does not understand, not really. Kakashi has been forced to watch his loved ones die, but he has never been subjected to desiring their murderer.

So Sasuke trains, and reties his mask when it begins to slip, when he begins to value his comrades. He completes his missions; the genius boy, the automaton killer with poison in his fingertips, poison in his heart.

He sees the threads beginning to form, the sacred chains between him and those who call themselves his friends, those who _he_ has begun to call friends, sometimes, when he forgets himself.

He sees the bonds, and, exhausted, scared and broken beyond repair, knows that they must be severed. And every night, in the dark, under the moon as it comes through his window, they are. His teammates, who love him, may distract him from obsession, but they cannot follow him home, into his bed, into his mind. They cannot save him from himself. His older brother kisses him and holds a kunai to his chest, and emotions for others are shattered, cut, sheared away by a blade in the dark.

Sasuke lives with his unwanted fear and his unwanted lust, lives with fantasies of soft kisses and long black hair, with dreams of pleasure and pain and sick satisfaction.

He lives in terror, until the day the serpent comes.


	2. Desire

_Chapter 2: Desire__

Sasuke is desirous of power.

He does not dwell on his fixation; he treads carefully around it, like a man facing a tiger or the quick dart of a cobra's fangs, but the obsession; the lust; is there.

He fled his village two years ago because a serpent with eyes of molten gold promised to help him defeat his brother. Back then, he was a boy with a broken heart and terrible, captivating dreams. He was full of bewilderment and sorrow and hatred, entrenched so deep that even Naruto, who healed Gaara's pain, could not get it out. Orochimaru saw this in him and used it to persuade him; manipulation of one's darkest flaws is the sannin's greatest gift.

Now, Sasuke lives in the every-changing tunnels of the Sound Village's hideouts, far from the sky and the sun and the night, instead of in the open, sunny streets of Konoha where the empty Uchiha district and the full, fat moon are never far away. Now, Sasuke lives in a very different world; one where desire is encouraged and incestuous fantasies are an amusing quirk rather than a crime.

And as his world has changed, Sasuke has changed.

The dramas of the Sound village are very different from the childish scuffles and dog-chasing missions of early Team Seven. Here, Orochimaru is leader; his will is law and his favor (with all the power and privilege it brings) is the prize.

Sasuke, when he first arrived, did little but train and keep to himself. He was aloof and sullen, because this new place and its bizarre people made him anxious. He saw only indulgent, slippery Orochimaru and enigmatic Kabuto, whose inscrutability enraged Sasuke almost as much as the medic's affable little smile. Sasuke was alone with his sensei, his doctor and, at night, his dreams.

It was his dislike of Kabuto which first led Sasuke out of his self-imposed isolation. He wanted to find the older ninja's weaknesses; wanted to get past the false smirk of the spy. And, among the test-subjects and prospective warriors of the Sound, he discovered the networks of gossip and intrigue which ran among Orochimaru's followers.

Sasuke, the favored one, the dearly bought future host with a rare kekkei genkai and a curse seal, was not exactly welcome among the ranks. But there were some who sought his company, hoping to catch their clever, fickle lord's attentions by proxy, and from them he acquired information.

He found out that the previous favorite, Kaguya Kimmimaro, had died to get he, Sasuke, back to the Sound hideout. He discovered that Kimmimaro had been Orochimaru's catamite as well as his future body, and that this was a position he was probably going to fill, once he got a little older.

Whispers reached Sasuke that Kabuto had a tendency to be jealous of the pretty young men who ended up in Orochimaru's bed before they became containers for the sannin's soul. Kabuto's blankness and occasional irritation with Sasuke began to make sense, as did the Otokage's possessiveness over his medic.

Webs upon webs emerged; of relationships, of obsessions, of talents or mere wishes for talent.

Yes, the Sound was certainly interesting. Intrigue upon lies upon scandal, held together by lust and ambition. And the key to it, Sasuke realized in the end, was that hearing all the gossip conferred a kind of power.

That is Orochimaru's lesson. Jutsu are power, the forbidden is power, and information, beautiful knowledge; that is the most subtle and poisonous power of all.

With power, one can conquer many things.

Sasuke is desirous of power.

He seeks it in the lessons of his smirking, pale sensei, in the way Orochimaru moves his hands during a summons and the way he charms a newly promoted subordinate, offering power, hinting at privilege.

Sasuke seeks power in the quiet insults he directs towards Kabuto, in the adrenaline rush he gets from provoking the other man and the overly long looks he sees between the medic and the sannin, in the anger which flicker's in Kabuto's eyes whenever Orochimaru touches anyone else.

Sasuke seeks power in death and power in the darker sides of life, and his master, the lord of all which is hidden and perverse, is glad to tutor him.

Once a year or so has passed, Sasuke is taught different kinds of power. For the youngest Uchiha, who is now aloof and sullen towards Orochimaru's other pets because he knows all their secrets, the politics of seduction, of intimacy (even though it is often feigned) are not easy to master.

But Sasuke learns them nonetheless; learns how to be coy and shy or begging and whorish, learns that danger arouses the sannin as much as it does him, and that it is no bad thing to be a masochist in Orochimaru's bed.

He stores sexual indoctrination in his memory along with every other thing he has learned, and tries not to think about some of the stranger games the sannin has played with him. He tries not to remember, too often, what Orochimaru did when he found out about the dreams.

But sometimes, he cannot help but think about it. Sasuke spent so long (_so long_) keeping his dreams at the back of his subconscious, fighting them; hiding from the horror and the longing they filled him with.

He still has them, the dreams, but now he wakes up to see golden eyes and a quiet, sardonic smile; now there is someone who is not afraid to follow Sasuke home, to his room, to his bed. Orochimaru's dearest ambition is to get inside Sasuke's mind (in order to take it over, of course) and so he delights in the twisted, tangled psychology of the youngest Uchiha.

The first time Orochimaru found Sasuke, awake in the dark, sobbing to himself amid sticky sheets, the sannin made him tell the dream aloud.

As has been said, in the Sound, Sasuke changed. He moved from a tormented, taciturn boy ruled by fear and anger to a cynical ninja who, while he has not gotten rid of his fear, hides it well.

He is fifteen, almost sixteen; he wears clothes some streetwalkers would be ashamed of, because Orochimaru finds it amusing to dress up his favorite. Sasuke is no longer afraid of his homosexuality, his masochism, or his ambition. He embraces them.

He has learned, and learned well, the oft-repeated lesson among the Sound; that power conquers many things. Among the things it has conquered for Sasuke are shame, ignorance, and most of his vulnerability.

_Most_ of his vulnerability.

Orochimaru ordered, remember, to be told Sasuke's dream. Sasuke obeyed.

One would have expected Orochimaru to be jealous, to be confused, to be a little disturbed, even, as Sasuke recounted how the dreams began, as he told, in a hiccupping, broken sob he hated, what his brother's mouth was like, and how cold the edge of the kunai was, pressed against his chest.

Orochimaru was not. He was fascinated.

This was how it went.

The sannin listens, sitting on Sasuke's bed, watching the boy carefully, as one would watch a fire gone a little out of control, or a pet dog which has just done a new trick.

Orochimaru, when Sasuke falls silent, asks for more.

And he coaxes out more, eyes like poisoned honey gleaming in the darkness; coaxes out every detail of the recurring dream from Sasuke; and there _were_ details, now; as Sasuke's knowledge has increased the hazy fog of lust has become terrible clarity.

Sasuke shudders as he speaks of kneeling before Itachi on a street littered with corpses, and he whispers of how the small stones seem to dig into his back when his brother lays him down on the blood-spattered ground and spreads his legs apart.

Orochimaru's smile grows broad as the dream goes on, and Sasuke guesses that his master's lust is sparked. The sannin had wanted Itachi before he acquired a younger version instead, Sasuke knew, and the exact offenses for which Orochimaru lost his hand to Itachi remain a mystery.

When Sasuke has finished, he sits in silence, pale faced and wide eyed, the hateful tear-tracks still glistening on his cheeks, nausea and arousal toxic in his belly, making him burn. Orochimaru reaches out and for a moment grasps the boy's chin in one long-fingered, pale hand, leaning in as if for a kiss. Then his hand withdraws, forms seals, and all Sasuke sees is one final smirk before he is knocked flat on his back.

He looks up at the man straddling him, and nearly cries out.

It is Itachi.

Or rather, it is Orochimaru's shadow clone, wearing his brother's face.

The fake Itachi leans down and presses a kiss to Sasuke's neck with soft, hungry lips, and this time Sasuke cannot stifle his noise of shock, which changes into a moan.

Sasuke is desirous of power.

He wants to be strong, wants to be invulnerable; wants to be unbreakable to even the hardest blow, the softest word.

Orochimaru, after that first night, often wears Itachi's form when he sleeps with Sasuke. He is a master manipulator, the snake sannin. He is fascinated by knowledge, and knowing what Sasuke's final weakness is, his final want, his final fear, is almost as enjoyable to him as murdering the Sandaime was.

Sasuke, who was once ambivalent towards Orochimaru, grows to hate him, after a while. He dismisses Orochimaru as beneath his true attention, but not for the reasons he tells himself.

Sasuke disregards his once vaguely respected teacher because Orochimaru knows his weakness, the depth of his feelings for his brother. He loathes the sannin because his master knows how quickly Sasuke comes when it is Itachi (or an illusion of Itachi) who takes him. Orochimaru, Sasuke has decided, knows far too much.

Sasuke is desirous of power, but that is not the whole story.

What matters is why he wants it, and how his focus has shifted from destroying the object of his terror to destroying the man who is his only weakness.

Sasuke, over his two years of change, of education and near-prostitution, has learned much.

He has learned that Itachi, who he both hates and loves (although he still cannot admit to the latter) is the only thing left in the world which brings him pain or, in the dark, due to the whims of his master and his subconscious, brings him pleasure.

He has learned that power conquers many things, and he has learned to ask; "Why shouldn't it conquer my bond with my brother along with Itachi himself?"

He has learned that Orochimaru likes to play with his pets, and that Sasuke would do anything rather than be played with.

Sasuke is desirous of power, and he has learned much, but he has not learned _why_; has not examined the reasoning behind his wish.

He does not know that he wants power in order to kill Itachi, and that he wants to kill Itachi, now, because he is afraid, not of sleep anymore, but of weakness.

He is afraid of the intensity of what he feels for his brother, afraid that he will be destroyed, swept aside, doomed to be ignored by the man he loves-hates-hunts; doomed forevermore.

Sasuke wants to kill Itachi because Itachi is his last and strongest bond, and Orochimaru, who showed him how easily his own terror of sleep and desire for his brother could be used to control him, also showed him that what Sasuke most fears is to be used. Sasuke fears betrayal, and also that which has always led him to betrayal in the past; he fears love, adoration, desire; and longing.

Naruto and Sakura and Kakashi, Konoha ninja who cling to their loved ones even as those loved ones die, would never understand this. When the jinchuriki and the pink haired girl come looking for him after Tenchi bridge, that fact is proven. They do not understand that he needs to sever all bonds, and that he can only pursue the death of the final chain if he focuses only on his brother. They do not understand, and soon they are gone. None of them matter.

Orochimaru, who thinks he has Sasuke under control, does not understand either. Orochimaru does not realize the extent of his pupil's unwillingness to be a tool. The snake sannin has never in his life been slave to any sort of affection or loathing, and so he underestimates how much it hurts when such sensitive connections are toyed with. He too, in the end, does not matter.

So Sasuke learns, gathers the undercurrents of knowledge in the Sound, and waits. He obeys Orochimaru's whims; pretty kept boy with his rope belt and clothes which hide little. His eyes, however, hide everything, even if the cover of his shirt is close to nonexistent. The young Uchiha's black gaze, blank and seemingly empty, conceals a terrible love-hatred for Itachi and an icy repulsion-hatred for Orochimaru.

He watches the politics of this other village, this second community he has been a part of, and knows he can discard it whenever he chooses.

He watches politics, and plans his escape, his flight, his own abandonment of the place he formed among Orochimaru's followers. He thinks only of one man, most of the time; his fixation is absolute.

Itachi. Itachi killed his family, Itachi broke his heart, and Itachi has made his sleep a seductive horror for the past six years. Itachi he will kill; maybe for justice, maybe for revenge, but certainly because then the dreams will stop. Itachi he will kill, because then, he thinks, he will be free.

Sasuke lives with his new knowledge and his lust for power, lives with a master with long dark hair who likes to wear his brother's face. He lives with nights spent offering his body as a preliminary to what Orochimaru thinks will be a permanent arrangement.

He lives in desire, until the day he kills the serpent and goes to hunt Itachi.

**AN: **Only one chapter left to go! *pants* this whole putting effort into fanfiction is foreign to me… eehehehe.

(Hint: if you find crazy twisted psychology fics entertaining, or not, tell me why. If you have concrit or creeped-outness or just squeeing, tell my why. The pretty button with the pretty green writing is pretty. Click it. You know you want to. Imagine there's a dancing naked Sasuke waiting if you click it. Or something. Whatever floats your boat. A dancing Tsunade floats mine, if you wanted to know. But _click it_.)


	3. Grief

Sasuke is bound by grief.

It took him a long time to see it; a battle and a stretch of unconsciousness, a few hours in a shadowy room. Days. Eons. But he has seen it now, and it cloaks his soul with anguish.

As he leaves Orochimaru's tunnels and goes to find his brother in the company of other broken children, Sasuke is made of steel. His roiling, monstrous mess of love and obsession and aching terror is, as he obliterates his master, forged into a sword; a weapon tempered in hatred and carried with one purpose.

He never smiles, never frowns; never even turns his head to watch the world as he passes through it. He walks like a ghost, or a murderer; barely existing, closed up tight. His (new) teammates bicker and sulk and flirt, Sound nin who want to take the gossip with them even though the man who fueled it is dead. Sasuke is silent. He hunts.

Every morning, with his face a mask and his mind a sharpened blade, Sasuke pushes his dreams aside into the darkness of his psyche. They are still there, still lurking at the edges, but he shoves them away with perfect equanimity, perfect lack of empathy. They do not matter, just as Konoha and Orochimaru do not matter, just as Naruto's efforts to retrieve him are of no importance.

The dreams do not matter, or he tells himself that they do not. Nothing matters but Itachi, Itachi's punishment, Itachi's death.

Sasuke denies the fact, as he denies everything else, that when Itachi is gone there will be nothing left for him to do or be or hate.

He hunts for his brother, and, after a time, he finds him.

When, in the abandoned Uchiha stronghold, in the dark, Itachi turns to face Sasuke and looks at him with kaleidoscope eyes, there is a brief moment in which Sasuke is afraid. He stares, blankly, without the sharingan, at the terribly, sickeningly familiar face of his impassive elder sibling, and he does not know what to do.

"Sasuke. It's me," his brother says, and it takes all the boy's courage not to run away, run far away, away from this face which has too many memories at its beck and call.

When he looks at Itachi, as Sasuke sees him; at handsome, enigmatic, sane-out-the-other-side-of-madness Itachi; Sasuke's mind replays the murder of his family, replays the dark erotica of his dreams, and more than his dreams; replays the illusions a serpent forced upon him, down in another dark place.

They watch each other, the last Uchiha brothers, the ones tied together by hatred and other, less simple things.

Sasuke, in the convoluted, multifaceted place which is his own mind, forces order out of chaos and picks up once more the sword of his loathing, holding it in focus, a talisman against the memories.

As he has done many times before, the young man beats his own soul into submission, and stands with a face paler than porcelain, a mask that reaches deep.

Words are exchanged, then; trivialities spoken by cold lips and reinforced by colder eyes. Things have changed, since their last encounters. It remains to be seen whether the Uchiha brothers are on equal footing as shinobi, but of their matched skill at impenetrable facades there is no doubt.

"You don't know a thing about me," Sasuke whispers, dead eyed. They dance around each other, quick in movement, unbending in vigilance.

"Just how much hatred I have bottled up in this heart…" he goes on, wielding his imaginary sword. "Or just how strong I've become as a result of that."

"You don't know a single thing about me," Sasuke hisses to the man who has been the only thing he ever truly hated, ever completely feared, ever really wanted.

Sasuke is bound by grief.

He does not know it yet, but the net is tightening, the chords of his anguished destiny drawing in around him, unseen and pushed aside.

They fight. That is enough to summarize the battle between brothers; enough, at least, for this chronicle. Other artificers of narrative have laid out the movement of lightning-quick taijutsu, the battles of illusion; the mounting arms-race which is the clash of sharingan versus sharingan.

The physical world is not for this story. The final escapade of twisted sibling attachment, of Sasuke and his dreams, his lust; I write of that, and it takes place in the mind.

They fight. Itachi stops, at one point, to give his little brother a sardonic and somewhat crazed appraisal of their clan's bloody history. Sasuke is not surprised by it, not really, and does not listen with all of his attention. In his soul, he knows it already. Why else would he feel for Itachi what he does? The past actions of his cursed, unfortunate tribe are of no importance. Now, _now_; now Sasuke fights Itachi, and there is nothing more important to him than the progression of that fight.

Sasuke is a mask.

He has a façade maintained without flaw, without a slip which might disclose emotion or humanity beneath it.

The mask is one of the greatest tools of the Uchiha, matched only by their fabled kekkei genkai. The aloof, domineering attitude which comprises it has served the clan well, shielding its greatest geniuses. Itachi, prodigy, accomplished spy, had mastered it by the time he was thirteen.

For Sasuke, learning the mask took all the years of training and suffering and torment between his clan's slaughter and the day, in his sixteenth year, when he fights his brother for the last time.

Sasuke is a sword.

He burns with hatred, maintaining a perfect edge, the grip of his mind on the weapon which is his self tighter than a steel vice.

Sasuke's control, now, goes beyond terror, beyond lust. It is sharp, pristine and stripped of all confusion.

What his mind has become outside the ever-watchful guardianship of his loathing is another matter entirely. But he hides it well, the tempest, and to him that is all which matters.

Sasuke is a broken child.

He holds himself together; has had to _learn _to hold himself together, to connect the fragile pieces of his composure above the molten fire which the inside of every great Uchiha.

But Sasuke is broken, and his last defense (the sword of hatred, remember; the weapon his brother told him to forge) cracks apart in the end.

The exact moment when Sasuke's final mask splits forever is easy to pinpoint. It is when his beloved, hated Itachi, instead of ripping out his younger sibling's eyes, touches gentle fingers to Sasuke's forehead and says "Sorry, little brother; this is the last time."

Sasuke breaks apart when, under the soft, endless fall of the rain, he looks down to see his brother's corpse on the ground, bloodstained and empty, unresponsive as the sky. He feels something go wrong inside his chest, something small and yet more painful than anything he has ever experienced. He feels the start of the sorrow.

Then darkness claims him, and the two brothers lie together under the weeping clouds. They lie together amid the ruins of their clan's fortress, and they are silent.

Sasuke is bound by grief.

After he wakes up in a dark cave with a stranger as his kidnapper, the boy who thought he was the last Uchiha runs a whole gamut of emotions.

As the man who introduces himself as Madara tells a story of war and love and betrayal, Sasuke is forced to listen.

He tries to hide from what he hears. From anger to shock to panic and back to greater anger the young man flees, and always behind him the ghost of doubt and then, later, the ghost of overwhelming anguish follow.

In the end, having struggled and writhed and fought tooth and nail against the truth, against a shattering of all he has believed and lived for over eight long years, Sasuke gives in.

It has been said before, but it bears repeating: if Sasuke had only ever hated Itachi, things would have been almost easy. And if Sasuke had never felt for his brother adoration and longing and lust, then the things Madara told him would not have stuck. They would have had no internal evidence to support them, and the history related in a hidden cave would have been ever doubted by Sasuke Uchiha.

But, before eight years of hatred, Sasuke had eight years of loving his brother. And so the truth (or almost truth; nobody knows) which Madara speaks are the final hammer to find the cracks, to land the finishing blow. Sasuke is shown that the Itachi he loved was real, that his brother was a more honorable shinobi than any he had ever known, and that all his endless hatred had been in vain.

He is shown by Madara that the fixation he felt for Itachi was never really gone; it was only twisted, first, and then hidden by a mask, by a sword, by a lie.

Sasuke stands, afterwards, on a stone by the shore of the sea, and thinks about what he has been told.

He thinks about the founding of Konoha, about the eventual subjugation of his willful, powerful clan, about the truth of Itachi, which Madara told.

He thinks about how sorrow and bitter loss came crashing down on him when he finally believed; how his heart, long broken, is now broken _for _Itachi and not _by _him.

He thinks about the other story Madara related, after the dramatic revelations were over, after Sasuke was taught to believe. He thinks about the quiet anger in the mysterious, ancient shinobi's voice as he told Sasuke about his own brother, about beautiful, fierce, fragile Izuna who died too soon and whose sacrifice was forgotten.

Sasuke knows now that Madara too loved his brother in a way he should not have. He knows that Madara (lucky, lucky Madara) felt a little more than dreams and shadow clones, before Izuna's death. He knows that Madara, after almost a century, still holds on to his love, and will burn the world because of it.

Sasuke can almost see the two Uchiha boys, one long dead and the other still carrying his twisted devotion. He can almost see the spiked, ebony mane of the young war god who was Madara, and the full, somewhat effeminate face of dead Izuna, whose quiet demeanor belied his deadly power. He heard, in the dark cave, in Madara's voice, that the love they had for each other was almost as strange and complicated as the love he himself has for Itachi.

Like Sasuke, Madara too slaughtered his own sibling. Like Sasuke, Madara's crime is layered in self-lies and confused motives; nobody will ever know whether Izuna consented to the theft of his eyes, just as no one will ever truly understand in what ways Itachi's death was suicide and in what ways it was murder.

This second history, that of a brother loved well and killed quickly, is not one Sasuke will ever share with the world; it is personal. He will hide it in his own heart, as Madara has hidden it in his. Sasuke knows that the devious older Uchiha only told him the story to seduce Sasuke into obedience, but the young man does not reject the gift. He will remember Izuna, and honor the memory.

Sasuke ponders, on his rock by the sea, the way his clan constructed itself over the decades. Between ambition and power-lust and perversity, it's almost as if fratricide and incest was the inevitable result.

That night, when Sasuke falls asleep at last, his dreams have changed. Now it is under a sky of rain in the ruins of a fortress that he meets Itachi, rather than in a street littered with corpses. Now there is no kunai in his brother's hand, and that delicate, worry lined face bears a smile.

But, as before, the dream plays out a strange scene. As before, Itachi reaches out and kisses Sasuke, the rain running down their faces, over their skin. And as before, Sasuke does not resist his sibling's touch.

Sasuke Uchiha is bound by grief, and he is bound willingly.

Child of a cursed clan, son of a murdered family, brother to a dead shinobi, there are too many ties binding him to ever be cut, ever be severed. He will be bound until the day he dies.

The terror and anguished lust of the past have been untangled, cast aside with Itachi's death; just as Sasuke hoped they would be. But love remains, love and the bitter want which can never be fulfilled, want which, as Madara has taught him, their clan has always known.

The dreams, once feared, once used against Sasuke, have not let go of him. But they are _his_ now. His brother; his beloved, noble, martyred brother; is _his_. Sasuke knows now that Itachi was always his, to the very end.

Naruto, heir to the Will of Fire, still pure in his affections and his thoughts, dreams of bringing Sasuke back; dreams of healing him. But Sasuke has abandoned all bonds save those of grief, despite the lingering interest he still has for the golden boy, his opposite, his rival.

Sasuke loves only the dead, now; he and Madara are alike in that. And his love, as Madara's did, is leading him into darkness.

One who loves the dead cannot love the living, you see. The loyalties conflict. The bonds tangle. Sasuke has had enough of tangles; more than enough. He will never be pure, never be cleansed; not really. But he can seek revenge, and feel as though it redeems him.

The death of every living soul in Konoha may appease Sasuke for a while, but the fact that he desires such death is proof of a single thing:

Sasuke Uchiha has failed to learn not to love his brother. He has not learned to let Itachi go. If he had, he would honor his dead obsession's memory by going home, back to the Leaf; going and making Naruto happy. He would give his future to the village, as Itachi did.

Sasuke loves Itachi, _needs _Itachi, but he does not understand the other man. He loves, that is all. And that is the tie, the chain, the red string of fate, which shall lead him to his tomb. For his love is full of unfulfilled desire, full of longing and passion-charged memories, full of grief and fueled by dreams.

Sasuke lives with his love, claimed at last and chosen. He lives with his grief, lives with dreams of a dead man who kisses him in a ruin, who strips him bare under the rain and answers his never-ending want with adoration.

Sasuke lives, and remains bound, and what the end of his chained soul will be is not my place to guess.

**A/N: **ahahahaaha I finished it! *happy dance* Now I can leave Sasuke's head alone for a while. Dang is that kid messed up.

Uchiha three-shot is complete, despite lack of conclusion, because it doesn't really _need _one. The bonds are only the cause. As to the effect… we will have to wait for actual canon to create more theories.

I would very much appreciate to be told what you think. My gratitude.


End file.
